Presents the story of how Henry Wells and William Fargo went into express mail business in California and stopped the Post Office monopoly during the nineteenth century.

Chronicling the California gold rush, from its beginning in 1848, through its peak, to the 1849 recession that brought about its end, this book presents a fascinating account of "The Gold Rush" with black-and-white photographs from the Wells Fargo Archives.

In January 1, 1885, Wells, Fargo & Company's chief detective James B. Hume and special agent John N. Thacker published a report summarizing the company's losses during the previous 14 years. It listed 313 stagecoach robberies, 23 burglaries, and four train robberies but included little or no details of the events themselves, focusing instead on physical descriptions of the robbers. Widely circulated, the report was intended to assist law enforcement in identifying and apprehending the criminals believed still to present a danger to the company. The present volume revisits each crime, updating Hume and Thacker's original report with rich new details culled from local newspapers, personal diary entries, and court records.

These are the remarkable memoirs of Fred Dodge (1854-1938), Wells Fargo secret agent for fifty years, friend of Wyatt Earp, and fast man with a gun. Here are dozens of his cases--stage robberies, train holdups, long pursuits through the badlands, even suits against Wells Fargo for "delay to a corpse" and the bite of a vicious horse. In Under Cover for Wells Fargo his "unvarnished recollections" are preserved and carefully edited by Carolyn Lake, who discovered Dodge’s journals among Stuart N. Lake’s papers, awaiting a biography that was never written. Fred Dodge was a dead ringer for Morgan Earp, and this led to his early acquaintance with the famous brothers. In those days Dodge was posing as a gambler, and even Wyatt did not know that he was a Wells Fargo agent. Dodge sheds much light on the Earps in Tombstone and on how he teamed up with Heck Thomas to hunt down outlaws in Kansas and Oklahoma, including Bill Doolin’s gang and the Dalton brothers.

Sweeping in scope, as revealing of an era as it is of a company, Stagecoach is the epic story of Wells Fargo and the American West, by award-winning writer Philip L. Fradkin. The trail of Wells Fargo runs through nearly every imaginable landscape and icon of frontier folklore: the California Gold Rush, the Pony Express, the transcontinental railroad, the Civil and Indian Wars. From the Great Plains to the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean, the company's operations embraced almost all social, cultural, and economic activities west of the Mississippi, following one of the greatest migrations in American history. Fortune seekers arriving in California after the discovery of gold in 1849 couldn't bring the necessities of home with them. So Wells Fargo express offices began providing basic services such as the exchange of gold dust for coin, short-term deposits and loans, and reliable delivery and receipt of letters, money, and goods to and from distant places. As its reputation for speed and dependability grew, the sight of a red-and-yellow Wells Fargo stagecoach racing across the prairie came to symbolize not only safe passage but faith in a nation's progress. In fact, for a time Wells Fargo was the most powerful and widespread institution in the American West, even surpassing the presence of the federal government. Stagecoach is a fascinating and rare combination of Western and business history. Along with its colorful association with the frontier -- Wyatt Earp, Black Bart, Buffalo Bill -- readers will discover that swiftness, security, and connectivity have been constants in Wells Fargo's history, and that these themes remain just as important today, 150 years later.

Book 1 in The Wells Fargo Trail. A series of payroll holdups puts Zac Cobb on a dangerous trail that leads to a confrontation with powerful underworld figures.

In the tradition of his award-winning biographies, Meriwether Lewis and Fool's Gold, acclaimed historian Richard Dillon recreates the life of one of frontier America's most gifted lawmen, James B. Hume. Dillon paints a vivid picture of Hume, the greatest of Wells, Fargo and company's detectives, who ranged all over the West in search of robbers of the firm's express shipments. Formerly a sheriff in California's Mother Lode gold mining country, Hume did not operate in the usual manner of most western lawmen. Instead of using his gun in apprehending badmen, this courageous lawman preferred to rely on his brains. In collaboration with famed San Francisco policeman Isaiah Lees, Hume pioneered scientific detection in law enforcement in the American West-a science later known as criminology. In one of history's most fascinating arrests, Hume used a laundry mark to track down Black Bart, the poetry writing stagecoach robber. "Dillon...has written a colorful biography of an Indiana farm-boy, James Hume, who heeded the 'Go West' cry of his time...Dillon's portrait of the man is remarkably human and rounded." -Publishers Weekly "In a fast-paced story, historian Dillon gives life to this remarkable Wells, Fargo detective. While all the excitement of the chase is here, Dillon also gives a sensitive view of the whole man." -American West "Richard Dillon always writes with an adroit selection of words and phrases. In Wells, Fargo Detective he adds sardonic humor by reprinting extracts from the amazingly cold and stormy love letters Hume wrote his 'intended.'" -Arizona and the West "This biography by Richard Dillon reads as smoothly as a novel. He used James Hume's own letters and diaries...He not only relates the fascinating events of Hume's public life but mines his personality as well and finds a heroic and likable figure." -Carmon Friedrich